It’s a sad day when conservatives have to expend all of their political capital preventing Republicans from making the Islamic terror problem worse rather than uniting to fight the willful blindness of the Left. Unfortunately, that is exactly what some conservatives had to do on the House floor yesterday.

We already know what the GOP-controlled House of Representatives, as the body closest to the people, does NOT do. It does not use the power of the purse or oversight to fight for the people on any gravely consequential issue in a meaningful way, such as refugees, immigration enforcement, Obamacare, Iran, etc. But what does it do with all that time in Washington?

If you answered “sitting on the ball and running out the clock,” you have correctly accounted for everything Republicans do in a given week.

Late yesterday afternoon, Republicans voted on a whopping 35 suspension votes. There are another 14 to come today. Suspension votes were designed for legitimately non-controversial issues, such as the naming of post offices, whereby the bill is brought to a vote with no committee action. These bills are subject to limited debate and win passage so long as they garner a two-thirds majority. Instead of using this procedural move as an exception to passing legislation, Republicans have been using the suspension calendar as the main course of their agenda; pushing banal or often liberal bills through without scrutiny. The practice itself is offensive because most congressional offices don’t have the time to analyze so many off-topic bills on a variety of issues. Moreover, Republicans chastised the Pelosi Congress for spending most of their time on vanity issues instead of addressing the core problems with our economy and security.

Initially, House leadership planned to ram these bills through by voice vote. Doing so would not have required a recorded vote. While some of the bills covered the naming of post offices, others created new programs and should have required scrutiny and input from the membership. One bill, for example, mandated that all public bathrooms have change tables for babies. Another bill expanded Medicaid programs, even though we already spend $365 billion on this behemoth which does nothing for upward mobility, but rather perpetuates a need for its own existence. To protest this action, Reps. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas (A, 96%), Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan. (A, 91%), Justin Amash, R-Mich. (A, 96%), and several others stood on the floor throughout the day to demand roll call votes.

But one bill, which was rigorously protested by Gohmert, deserves a special mention. As part of House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul’s, R-Texas (F, 58%) obsession with throwing money at the jihad problem instead of addressing the willful blindness at a policy level, he sponsored a suspension bill (H.R. 5859) to create a new $195 million counterterrorism grant program. DHS already spends $1.6 billion on wasteful programs to train local law enforcement, but as we’ve noted before, much of those funds actually exacerbate the problem because they go towards “Countering Violent Extremism” programs. They literally empower the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated groups to train local law enforcement in Islamophobia instead of spotting jihadists.

Facing criticism for previous CVE bills, McCaul got smart and took out all references to CVE. Supporters of the bill claim that the money will go directly to law enforcement and does not involve CVE. The problem is that the bill still requires applicants to develop a plan to “work with community partners, ”which, in this sphere of work — especially under the current DHS — is heavily influenced by groups such as the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR).

Furthermore, why are Republicans acting like Democrats and throwing money at a policy problem? It’s like responding to a raging fire with a hose of coins instead of a hose full of water. It’s like Democrats spending $1.1 billion to fight Zika (when we already have unspent funds) and at the same time banning pesticides.

That we’ve brought in thousands of jihadists and that the FBI has allowed all of the recent terrorists to slip through their crosshairs is not the result of a lack of funding, it’s a result of willful blindness — the very willful blindness that is fostered by the groups that would be subcontracted under these programs. As Gohmert asked on the House floor, what is the purpose of throwing money at programs that train law enforcement to spot the Islamophobe instead of the jihadist?

Ironically, when McCaul called up the bill, he had Democrat Rep. Donald Payne Jr. D-N.J. (F, 16%) speak on the floor in favor of the bill because liberals support it. It’s an easy way not to talk about the real problem — CVE, the Muslim Brotherhood, mass migration and refugees, etc. In comes Louie Gohmert and claims time in opposition against “his own party” and absolutely demolishes the entire premise of the bill. It’s worth watching his full speech:

Gohmert made a simple demand: that if this bill is genuinely not about the CVE agenda, why not attach an amendment to prohibit any funding from being awarded to groups listed as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism trial?

The House will finish all of the roll call votes today (along with an additional 14 suspension votes) and will likely pass this bill with overwhelming support. Senate conservatives would be wise to put a hold on this bill and refuse to fast-track it to the Senate floor unless the limiting rider is placed in the bill.

In many respects, the activity on the House floor yesterday afternoon embodies the divide within the party. Mainline Republicans refuse to confront Democrats on important issues, spending most of their time with banal and liberal bills that offer the palest of pale pastel differences between the parties. Meanwhile, conservatives like Gohmert and Huelskamp fight the lonely battles for We the People.

It’s impossible to craft a solution to a security threat when policy-makers refuse to identify the nature of the threat, its source, and its threat doctrine. Given that Democrats refuse to even recognize any correlation between any form of Islam and Jihad, their policies reflect a perfectly consistent and unvarnished willful blindness of the modern jihadist threat. In releasing the House GOP’s plan to combat Islamic terror, however, Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas. (F, 58%) exhibits the same systemic misdiagnosis of the problem, albeit one that is a step or two closer to the truth than the Democrats.

The overall policy objectives, strategies, and suggestions, are overly general, almost vacuous, and obfuscate the true common sense path forward screaming out for much-needed attention from our political leaders.

This all stems from McCaul’s refusal to identify the specific threat of mass Sharia-adherent immigration, unreformed-Islam in general, and the fifth column that operates within this country to ensure that Muslim communities become disenchanted with America’s constitutional system of government.

The introduction sets the tone for the entire policy paper. McCaul asserts that “Islamist terrorists have perverted a major religion into a hateful worldview, and while most Muslims do not share their beliefs, their influence is spreading like wildfire.” While this definitely sounds more refreshing than the Democrat refusal to mention Islam at all, it is still a factually troubled statement because it completely divorces the problem from anything inherent in the practice of the religion itself by those who strictly adhere to Sharia. That is not a small group of people perverting a religion and it’s not isolated to terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS. While ISIS’s successful propaganda campaign has definitely fanned the flames and provided Sharia-adherents with a fulfillment of the caliphate, the problem existed long before 2013 and will continue after the caliphate collapses.

McCaul continues down this false narrative of divorcing “terrorists” (the scary network people abroad) from the general population of Sharia-supporting Muslims already living in America or those who seek to immigrate: “Terrorists are trying to send operatives to our shores and radicalize new ones in U.S. communities.”

Once again, McCaul believes that the threat is limited to potential infiltration of known terror networks into immigrant or native Muslim populations, completely disregarding the inherent threat of large populations of Sharia-adherents clustered together in the West. It’s as if McCaul can’t find Europe on a map.

While this is not the bold Hillary/Obama form of willful blindness, it presents us with Bush 2.0, a woefully inadequate approach – especially after eight years of Obama’s malfeasance.

The willful blindness in identifying the threat and its doctrine manifests in many of the polices laid out by the report:

Immigration/Refugees

McCaul’s report speaks of the need for better “vetting” of immigrants. He even mentions researching an applicant’s social media posting to see if they have pledged support to a terror group. But foundationally, he has no inherent problem with the record-high immigration from the Middle East. While this approach is one step ahead of the Obama blindness, in which applicants have a right to “privacy” from DHS officials investigating their social media activity, it misses the point. This is not merely about vetting for known individual terrorists or those espousing support for terrorist networks. This is about those who subscribe to the ideology that cultivates the climate of homegrown terror in the family, neighborhood, and community.

Take the case of Somali immigration, for example. We have admitted well over 100,000 Somali refugees over the past two decades — in contravention to America’s national interests on any level. Dozens from the Minneapolis community have been charged with terrorism-related activities, and statements from the U.S. Attorney in Minnesota indicate that there is a culture that runs much deeper than those numbers suggest. Was this something we could have weeded out through “vetting” 15-25 years ago? Perhaps in a few cases. But for the most part, this is a cumulative problem inherent in mass migration from dangerous Islamic countries.

This is the enduring lesson from the jihadists of Boston, Ft. Hood, Chattanooga, San Bernardino, Orlando, and the pair of Somali and Afghani immigrants who perpetrated attacks this past weekend. Typically, the parents will not engage in terrorism. Nonetheless, they cluster in communities that adhere to Sharia and are educated through Muslim Brotherhood propaganda. The attackers in each of these cases were the second generation; the children brought to America by their parents or born on American soil. McCaul’s plan to look myopically for connections or allegiance to a specific terror group might save a few more lives than under the Obama Administration, but it fails to identify the core of the problem and the enduring lessons from Europe.

Prison jihadism

To its credit, the report rightly warns that our prisons have become veritable jihadist breeding grounds, but it declines to name the biggest contributor to that reality. “As the number of convicted homegrown terrorists grows, so does the risk that our prisons will become wellsprings of fanaticism,” it reads. The report continues,

The federal government must examine non-governmental rehabilitation options for convicted terrorists to prevent more individuals from entering the prison system primed to spread their hateful ideology. The Bureau of Prisons should also take steps to combat prison radicalization, including proactively monitoring known extremists and putting measures in place to prevent them from inspiring fellow inmates to embrace terror.

One can only hope the federal government would be watching for groups with ties to organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood. Or how about the Islamic Society of North America, which was found on a list of Chaplaincy Endorsers provided by the federal government earlier this year. However, without making that clear, we cannot expect the federal government to do just that.

Thirteen years ago, the FBI arrested Abdurahman Alamoudi,the man responsible for establishing the entire Muslim chaplaincy program within the Bureau of Prisons, for funding Al Qaeda. In 2003, Chuck Schumer railed against the Bush administration for doing nothing to investigate all the people Alamoudi appointed (more on this from Ben Weingarten’s article yesterday). What is McCaul doing to this very day to go after the Muslim Brotherhood in the chaplaincy?

Terrorist travel

Here, again, the report confronts us with a premise that, as a baseline, nobody can find much fault. However, in doing so, the report muddles the details. It rightly states that jihadists leaving the United States to visit high-risk countries is a massive security concern, but says very little substantively to directly confront the problem. Perhaps the worst part of the report is that it calls on the Obama administration — which did a phenomenal job of enlisting Muslim Brotherhood affiliates for its ‘Countering Violent Extremism’ program — to develop a plan to stop jihadists from re-entering the United States. It says nothing of the plans already before Congress, like the Expatriate Terrorist Act, which would strip the citizenship of anyone who leaves to train with a foreign terror organization.

Instead, it says, “The White House should produce a strategy to combat terrorist travel and to prevent Americans from leaving to join terrorist organizations.” This is nothing short of laughable, given Obama’s track record.

Conclusion

McCaul is absolutely correct to observe that, fifteen years after 9/11, our counterterrorism policies have failed miserably. But they have failed because we didn’t accurately identify the threat confronting us, and that willful blindness did not begin with the Obama administration. Until political correctness is put aside and the threat is accurately identified, policymakers will continue missing the target with their solutions. This isn’t to say that it’s completely errant, however. Make no mistake, while McCaul’s proposals are far closer to the mark than anything we’ve seen from the Obama Administration thus far, they’re just far enough off of it to still be dangerous. And given McCaul’s prominent role in advising Donald Trump on homeland security, that should concern everyone who wants a bold change in direction.

In mid-July Rep. Rep. Mark Meadows (R.-N.C.) announced that conservative members of the House Freedom Caucus appear to have reached a deal with Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, over McCaul’s signature bill H. R. 5611, known as the “Homeland Safety and Security Act.”

McCaul’s bill had riled conservative House members and critics of the Obama Administration’s Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) program for providing millions of dollars to create a CVE office in Department of Homeland Security, and for failing to focus on Islamic terrorism in favor of the generic Administration preferred nomenclature of “violent extremism.”

The bill was then amended to include references to “radical Islam” and Islamic terrorism to replace generic extremism language, as a nod to critics. But these changes were largely textual, not structural, and didn’t address concerns that Countering Violent Extremism funds would be directed to Muslim community organizations with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and terror finance.

Rep. Meadows told Breitbart News on July 11th of a recent conference with Homeland Security Chairman McCaul, Rep. Scott Perry and Rep. Barry Loudermilk where the decision was reached to update the bill to include a number of conservative priorities.

An agreement was reached to include language to direct the U.S. State Department to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. Designation of the Brotherhood is also the subject of another bill authored by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart in the House and currently supported with 64 co-sponsors, and being included as part of a Homeland Security legislative package may be the designation bill’s best hope for passage.

These are issues of great concern to critics of CVE, who have repeatedly pointed out that CVE participants from the Muslim community have included Muslim Brotherhood groups, including those led or founded by unindicted co-conspirators.

Other examples include the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB), a CVE partner for the city of Boston, one of the three “model cities” represented by the Obama Administration’s CVE effort. ISB was founded by convicted Al Qaeda financier Adurrahman Alamoudi, and included as trustees Yusuf Al Qaradawi, and Jamal Badawi, all three of which were unindicted co-conspirators, and has been the mosque of choice for multiple terrorists including the Boston Marathon bombers.

These changes are major improvements over the original McCaul bill, and the Chairman should be applauded for accepting the constructive criticism for the betterment of the bill. The agreement over H.R. 5611 would represent an injection of sanity into the Obama Administration’s otherwise deeply flawed CVE program.

Additionally, both the prohibition against Holy Land Foundation unindicted co-conspirators in CVE grant programs, and pressuring the State Department on the designation of the Muslim Brotherhood are amendments likely be extremely unpopular in the Senate. House Republicans will need to hold the line in any future conference committee in order to see they remain in the final version.

Even if the bill should pass and reach the President, it would require an engaged and knowledgeable Congress to hold the Obama Administration, and subsequent administrations, accountable for their positions, and tough oversight to insure they are upheld.

WASHINGTON — Department of Homeland Security whistle-blower Philip Haney says he sought help from the House Homeland Security committee after he provided its members with pertinent information following the 2013 Boston bombing, but the committee refused to intervene when the Obama administration retaliated against Haney.

Instead, the committee sent him to an Obama administration official who was himself under investigation for covering up alleged corruption, Haney says. He worked at DHS’s National Targeting Center from November 2011 to June 2012, identifying radicalized individuals associated with terrorist organizations entering the United States.

“I identified individuals affiliated with large, but less well-known groups such as Tablighi Jamaat and the larger Deobandi movement freely transiting the United States,” he wrote in an article published in The Hill newspaper. “At the National Targeting Center, one of the premier organizations formed to ‘connect the dots,’ I played a major role in an investigation into this trans-national Islamist network. We created records of individuals, mosques, Islamic Centers and schools across the United States that were involved in this radicalization effort.”

However, late into President Obama’s first term and early into Obama’s second term, Haney says his work became compromised by DHS when it decided to shut down his investigation into the Islamic Institute of Education in Chicago, which was subsequently linked to the Dar Al Uloom Al Islamiyah Mosque in San Bernardino, California, and the Pakistani women’s Islamist group al-Huda.

Haney asserts that had he been able to continue his work, he and his Customs and Border Protection (CBP) colleagues may have been able to flag San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook before he caused any harm. According to Haney, Farook’s mosque, San Bernardino’s Deobandi movement is affiliated with Dar-al-Uloom al-Islamia.

Farook’s wife and accomplice in the December 2015 massacre, Tashfeen Malik, went to school at Pakistan’s al-Huda, which also is connected to the Deobandi movement.

After nine months of work and more than 1,200 law enforcement actions, as well as being credited with identifying more than 300 individuals with possible links to terrorism, Haney says, DHS shut down the investigation at the request of the State Department and DHS’ Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Division. Additionally, the administration deleted 67 investigative records Haney entered into the DHS database, he claims.

In his first act of blowing the whistle, Haney notified Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of a DHS document casually known as the “terrorist hands off list.” The senator then contacted DHS for further information, and the document’s existence became publicly known in May 2014. Grassley is known as a government whistle-blower advocate.

In April 2015, Judicial Watch sued for the document’s release. Haney wrote in his book “See Something, Say Nothing” that in May 2014 Customs Border Patrol officials “refused to answer multiple questions” about the “hands off terrorist list” in a closed-door meeting with Grassley’s staff.

“I knew that data I was looking at could prove significant to future counter terror efforts and tried to prevent the information from being lost to law enforcement. On July 26, 2013, I met with the DHS Inspector General in coordination with several members of Congress (both House and Senate) to attempt to warn the American people’s elected representatives about the threat,” Haney wrote.

By 2013, as Haney wrote in his book, he met with several members of Congress, including South Carolina Rep. Jeff Duncan, Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert and Grassley to tell them what the administration was doing to his work. One other member, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mike McCaul, also met with Haney and assured him the committee would protect him, and his information, he said.

Then came the incident that he says led him to be placed under investigation.

Days after the Boston bombing that same year, Haney met with McCaul’s committee in person and gave the members information about a Saudi national who was detained after the attack. Based on that information, Rep. Duncan grilled former DHS Secretary Janet Napolitanoon whether the man was going to be deported.

Napolitano said she did not think that the Saudi man was a person of interest.

“I am unaware of anyone who is being deported for national security concerns at all related to Boston. I don’t know where that rumor came from,” Napolitano said.

She said later, “Like I said, again I don’t even think he was technically a person of interest or a suspect. That was a wash. And I am unaware of any proceeding there, I will clarify that for you, but I think this is an example of why it is so important to let law enforcement to do its job.”

After the hearing, the committee wanted documentation that showed the Saudi man was, indeed, a person of interest. To get that documentation, the committee turned toDHS’s congressional liaison Ray Orzel .

“It was my day off but I got dressed and went to a secure location near the airport and printed off copies of the files,” he wrote. “At about 4:45 p.m., I faxed the files to the secure number at the House Homeland Security Committee offices in the Ford Building.”

Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier and TheBlaze then obtained leaked copies of the files, which confirmed that the Saudi man had been a person of interest and that he had been added to the government’s no-fly list. DHS said that he had later been removed from the no-fly list after finding that he was a victim of the attack.

Immediately after those media reports, Haney says the Department of Justice, the DHS Office of Internal Affairs and the DHS inspector general launched investigations into him as a result of the information he gave to the Homeland Security Committee that Duncan used to question Napolitano.

McCaul’s committee, Haney says, did not speak up for him or intervene in any way and instead suggested that he go to the inspector general’s office, which at the time was headed by acting inspector general Charles Edwards.

“They knew that I was being investigated,” he told The Daily Caller. “Three separate investigations all at the same time, because they are trying to accuse me of being the one who leaked the information to the media. Why didn’t they help me?”

Acting inspector general Edwards had problems of his own. He was being investigated for corruption when McCaul sent Haney over to him. When asked by this reporter about Edwards during the investigation, McCaul said, “The allegations are serious and there’s also an independent review right now. This is one of those cases that if the misconduct is correct and the allegations are correct, and I know he’s been put on administrative leave — he should not only be fired, the U.S. attorneys office should be looking at it.”

A bipartisan Senate Oversight report stated that Edwards compromised his job with Obama administration political aides as he put forth an effort to be tapped as the permanent inspector general of DHS.

Additionally, Edwards was probed for instructing staff to change an OIG Report of Investigation about the U.S. Secret Service scandal in Cartagena, Colombia, a charge he denied.

Whistle-blowers cited in the report from the DHS OIG office claimed Edwards “improperly destroyed or concealed e-mails, phone records, and hotline complaints, inappropriately favored particular employees, and retaliated against those who brought attention to supposed misconduct through the use of administrative leave or poor performance reviews.”

Haney questioned why McCaul would send him to Edwards in the first place, given the accusations against him. Additionally, Haney sent an appeal letter to Homeland Committee chief counsel R. Nicholas Palarino, expressing concern that Edwards may have tampered with the report he wrote on Haney (p.176 “See Something, Say Nothing”).

The Daily Caller sent an inquiry to McCaul’s committee and asked why the Homeland Security Committee did not intervene when Haney was investigated for the information he gave them as well as why they sent Haney to an IG being investigated for corruption.

“We will pass on the opportunity to participate,” a committee spokeswoman responded.

If you think ISIS is not a direct and immediate threat to Americans in America, think again…

Chairman McCaul: “The Islamist terror threat remains alarmingly high as recent arrests and terror plots demonstrate. ISIS recruits wage war in our communities, while thousands of deadly fighters trained in Syria stream back into the West – some of them infiltrating massive refugee flows. ISIS continues its global expansion on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and the still-dangerous al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula seizes greater territory in Yemen. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin and the revitalized Iran-Assad-Hezbollah terror axis are further destabilizing the Syrian crisis in the absence of U.S. leadership. This year is on track to be as dangerous as – if not worse than – 2015 for the American homeland and our national security.”

Key takeaways in this month’s Terror Threat Snapshot include:

The Iranian regime gained access to $100 billion in cash from the disastrous nuclear deal and is poised for further economic relief that will fuel its global network of terror.

An increasing number of battle-hardened fighters from Europe are returning from jihadist training grounds. Nearly 2,000 Europeans – among an estimated 6,600 Western fighters who have traveled to Syria and Iraq – have snuck back into Europe. A French counterterrorism official recently warned, “We are moving towards a European 9/11: simultaneous attacks on the same day in several countries…We know the terrorists are working on this.”

Islamist terrorists are exploiting global refugee flows to infiltrate and target the West. Germany’s domestic intelligence chief recently said terrorists “have slipped in camouflaged or disguised as refugees. This is a fact that the security agencies are facing.” A suspected ISIS terror plotter arrested in Germany this week snuck into Europe posing as a refugee. The European Union also recently assessed there is a “real and imminent danger” of Syrian refugees inside Europe being radicalized and recruited by Islamist extremists.

ISIS and al Qaeda are expanding their sanctuaries from North Africa to South Asia. ISIS is reinforcing its foothold in Libya, where it has amassed as many as 6,500 fighters and controls coastal territory on the Mediterranean Sea. Al Qaeda is making further gains in Yemen and its key ally in Afghanistan controls more territory than it has at any point since 2001.

The Obama Administration has surged the release of terrorists from Guantanamo Bay despite alarming rates of recidivism. The intelligence community has assessed that 30 percent of Guantanamo detainees released are either known to have or suspected of having rejoined the fight. The potential transfer of detainees to the United States, prohibited under law, would also pose a threat to the American people.

The United States faces the highest Islamist terror threat environment since 9/11. ISIS is waging war here in the homeland, where there have been 21 ISIS-linked plots to launch attacks. Law enforcement authorities have arrested 81 ISIS-linked suspects, including six thus far in 2016.

The chair of the House Homeland Security Committee warned the nation Monday during a wide-ranging address on national security matters, “We are a nation at war.”

Rep. Michael McCaul (R., Texas), in a State of Homeland Security address delivered at the National War College, flatly said: “Make no mistake: We are a nation at war.”

McCaul’s comments come on the heels of a major terror attack in San Bernardino, California that was allegedly committed by followers of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) terror group.

“Our own city streets are now the front lines,” McCaul said. “Indeed, San Bernardino was not an isolated event. Terrorists are on the offensive, working to deploy operatives to our shores and to radicalize our citizens to commit acts of violence.”

McCaul said that the U.S. homeland is experiencing the “highest threat environment since 9/11” and that the FBI is investigating “nearly 1,000 homegrown terror cases” across all 50 states, most of which are related to the Islamic State.

In the wake of San Bernardino, Islamic State affiliates have been connected to 19 “terrorist plots or attacks here at home,” McCaul said.

“These include plans to murder tourists on Florida beaches, to set off pipe bombs on Capitol Hill, to detonate explosives at New York City landmarks, and to live-stream an attack at an American college campus,” he said.

This year has been the “single most active year for homegrown terror we have ever tracked,” according to McCaul, who said “there were more homegrown terror cases in the first six months of 2015 than any full year since 9/11.”

McCaul went on to blast the Obama administration for failing to take concrete steps to battle the Islamic State and prevent further attacks on the United States.

“I was disappointed last night when the president failed to lay out any new steps to fight this menace,” he said. “Instead, he doubled down on a strategy of hesitancy and half-measures.”

He said the mass shooting in San Bernardino should serve as a “wake-up call” to Americans and U.S. lawmakers.

“This attack should not just be a wake-up call. It should be a call to action. For far too long, we have allowed extremists to reclaim their momentum, surging from terrorist cells into full-fledged terrorist armies,” McCaul said.

“As a result, I believe the state of our homeland is increasingly not secure, and I believe 2015 will be seen as a watershed year in this long war—the year when our enemies gained an upper hand and when the spread of terror once again awoke the West.”

McCaul lambasted some of his congressional colleagues for denying that the United States is under attack by terrorist forces.

“We are not acting early enough to keep terrorist groups from spreading, and there are some in Washington who are in denial about the threat we face,” he said.

The Obama administration has repeatedly said the United States is immune from attacks, despite a series of incidents fueled by extremist ideology.

“I have had enough,” McCaul said. “We cannot be blind to the threat before us. ISIS is not contained—it is expanding at great cost to the free world. In November, the group managed to conduct three major terrorist attacks on three separate continents in just three weeks.”

The Islamic State “is now more dangerous than al Qaeda ever was under Osama bin Laden,” McCaul said, adding that the terror group’s extremist ideology has “spread into the West, including into the United States.”

On Tuesday, the House Committee on Homeland Security, under the leadership of Chairman Michael McCaul, held the first of a series of very important hearings on the threat of radical Islamism.

As I told the committee in my testimony, it is vital that the United States Congress undertake a thorough, no-holds-barred review of the long, global war in which we are now engaged with radical Islamists. This review will require a number of committees to coordinate, since it will have to include Intelligence, Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, Judiciary, and Homeland Security at a minimum.

There are three key, sobering observations about where we are today which should force this thorough, no-holds-barred review of our situation.

These three points — which are backed up by the facts — suggest the United States is drifting into a crisis that could challenge our very survival.

First, it is the case that after 35 years of conflict dating back to the Iranian seizure of the American embassy in Tehran and the ensuing hostage crisis, the United States and its allies are losing the long, global war with radical Islamists.

We are losing to both the violent jihad and to the cultural jihad.

The violent jihad has shown itself recently in Paris, Australia, Tunisia, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Gaza, Nigeria, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Yemen, to name just some of the most prominent areas of violence.

Cultural jihad is more insidious and in many ways more dangerous. It strikes at our very ability to think and to have an honest dialogue about the steps necessary for our survival. Cultural jihad is winning when the Department of Defense describes a terrorist attack at Fort Hood as “workplace violence.” Cultural jihad is winning when the president refers to “random” killings in Paris when they were clearly the actions of Islamist terrorists and targeted against specific groups. Cultural jihad is winning when the administration censors training documents and lecturers according to “sensitivity” so that they cannot describe radical Islamists with any reference to the religious ideology which is the primary bond that unites them.

In the 14 years since the 9/11 attacks, we have gone a long way down the road of intellectually and morally disarming in order to appease the cultural jihadists, who are increasingly aggressive in asserting their right to define how the rest of us think and talk.

Second, it is the case that, in an extraordinarily dangerous pattern, our intelligence system has been methodically limited and manipulated to sustain false narratives while suppressing or rejecting facts and analysis about those who would kill us.

For example, there is clear evidence the American people have been given remarkably misleading analysis about al-Qaeda based on a very limited translation and publication of about 24 of the 1.5 million documents captured in the Bin Laden raid. A number of outside analysts have suggested that the selective release of a small number of documents was designed to make the case that al-Qaeda was weaker. These outside analysts assert that a broader reading of more documents would indicate al-Qaeda was doubling in size when our government claimed it was getting weaker — an analysis also supported by obvious empirical facts on the ground. Furthermore, there has been what could only be deliberate foot-dragging in exploiting this extraordinary cache of material.

Both Lieutenant General Mike Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and Colonel Derek Harvey, a leading analyst of terrorism, have described the deliberately misleading and restricted access to the Bin Laden documents.

A number of intelligence operatives have described censorship from above designed to make sure that intelligence which undermines the official narrative simply does not see the light of day.

Congress should explore legislation which would make it illegal to instruct intelligence personnel to falsify information or analysis. Basing American security policy on politically defined distortions of reality is a very dangerous habit which could someday lead to a devastating defeat. Congress has an obligation to ensure the American people are learning the truth and have an opportunity to debate potential policies in a fact-based environment.

Third, it is the case that our political elites have refused to define our enemies. Their willful ignorance has made it impossible to develop an effective strategy to defeat those who would destroy our civilization.

For example, the president’s own press secretary engages in verbal gymnastics to avoid identifying the perpetrators of violence as radical Islamists. Josh Earnest said that such labels do not “accurately” describe our enemies and that to use such a label “legitimizes” them.

This is Orwellian double-speak. The radical Islamists do not need to be delegitimized. They need to be defeated. We cannot defeat what we cannot name.

There has been a desperate desire among our elites to focus on the act of terrorism rather than the motivation behind those acts. There has been a deep desire to avoid the cultural and religious motivations behind the jihadists’ actions. There is an amazing hostility to any effort to study or teach the history of these patterns going back to the seventh century.

Because our elites refuse to look at the religious and historic motivations and patterns which drive our opponents, we are responding the same way to attack after attack on our way of life without any regard for learning about what really motivates our attackers. Only once we learn what drives and informs our opponents will we not repeat the same wrong response tactics, Groundhog Day–like, and finally start to win this long war.

Currently each new event, each new group, each new pattern is treated as though it’s an isolated phenomenon — as if it’s not part of a larger struggle with a long history and deep roots in patterns that are 1,400 years old.

There is a passion for narrowing and localizing actions. The early focus was al-Qaeda. Then it was the Taliban. Now it is the Islamic State. It is beginning to be Boko Haram. As long as the elites can keep treating each new eruption as a freestanding phenomenon, they can avoid having to recognize that this is a global, worldwide movement that is decentralized but not disordered.

There are ties between Minneapolis and Mogadishu. There are ties between London, Paris, and the Islamic State. Al-Qaeda exists in many forms and under many names. We are confronted by worldwide recruiting on the Internet, with Islamists reaching out to people we would never have imagined were vulnerable to that kind of appeal.

We have been refusing to apply the insights and lessons of history, but our enemies have been very willing to study, learn, rethink, and evolve.

The cultural jihadists have learned our language and our principles — freedom of speech, freedom of religion, tolerance — and they apply them to defeat us without believing in them themselves. We blindly play their game on their terms, and don’t even think about how absurd it is for people who accept no church, no synagogue, no temple in their heartland to come into our society and define multicultural sensitivity totally to their advantage — meaning, in essence, that we cannot criticize their ideas.

Our elites have been morally and intellectually disarmed by their own unwillingness to look at both the immediate history of the first 35 years of the global war with radical Islamists and then to look deeper into the roots of the ideology and the military-political system our enemies draw upon as their guide to waging both physical and cultural warfare.

One of the great threats to American independence is the steady growth of foreign money pouring into our intellectual and political systems to influence our thinking and limit our options for action. Congress needs to adopt new laws to protect the United States from the kind of foreign influences which are growing in size and boldness.

Sun Tzu, in The Art of War, written 500 years before Christ, warned that “all warfare is based on deception.” We are currently in a period where our enemies are deceiving us and our elites are actively deceiving themselves — and us. The deception and dishonesty of our elites is not accidental or uninformed. It is deliberate and willful. The flow of foreign money and foreign influence is a significant part of that pattern of deception.

We must clearly define our enemies before we can begin to develop strategies to defeat them.

We have lost 35 years since this war began.

We are weaker and our enemies are stronger.

Congress has a duty to pursue the truth and to think through the strategies needed and the structures which will be needed to implement those strategies.

— Newt Gingrich was speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999.

WASHINGTON, DC — The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) has been linked to “29 terrorist plots or attacks” against the West nearly a year after President Obama called the jihadist group a “JV team,” revealed House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX).

As ISIS stormed Iraq in January 2014, President Obama dismissed the brutal jihadist organization as a junior varsity (“jayvee team”) terrorist group.

“A year after the president called ISIS the ‘JV team,’ the organization can draw on over 20,000 foreign fighters and has been linked to 29 terrorist plots or attacks targeting the West,” said Chairman McCaul in his opening remarks at a House Homeland Security Committee hearing today. “And the day the president said the global war on terror was effectively over was the day al Baghdadi created ISIS.”

“ISIS now controls territory the size of Belgium, governs millions of people, draws on billions of dollars in revenue, and commands tens of thousands of foot soldiers,” he added. “Terrorist safe havens have spread across the Middle East and North Africa.”

The chairman went on to note that ISIS claimed responsibility for the deadly terrorist attack at a museum in Tunisia, which is located next to Libya where the jihadist group hasestablished a presence.

Furthermore, the Texas Republican pointed out that ISIS, a Sunni group, has also claimed to be behind the coordinated attack against two Shiite mosques in Yemen, which he said, “killed more than 150 people.”

“Yemen’s instability has led to the evacuation of our remaining forces and will further empower extremists,” he added. “This situation is alarming given that al Qaeda’s premier bomb-makers in [Yemen-based] AQAP [al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] have been targeting the homeland and Western interests for years.”

“Over the past year, Islamist terrorists have struck Western cities, including Paris, Sydney, Ottawa, Copenhagen, and Brussels. We have witnessed the reach of extremists here at home as well,” noted McCaul. “An Ohio-based ISIS sympathizer was arrested in January for plotting to attack the U.S. Capitol. Last week, an ISIS-aligned hacking group posted the names, photos, and addresses of 100 American service members, calling their ‘brothers residing in America’ to attack these individuals.”

Today’s House panel hearing was titled, “A Global Battleground: The Fight Against Islamist Extremism at Home and Abroad.” [statement pdf’s available at hearing link]

Just over a week ago, Senator Diane Feinstein and Representative Mike Rogers, chairs of the Senate and House Intelligence committees respectively, warned America that we are not safer today from the threat of Jihadist terrorism than we were several years ago. We told you about their discussion on this matter on CNN’s Sunday morning news show, State of the Union, in an email bulletin last week, but it is worth reviewing their appearance again.

It turns out that Feinstein and Rogers aren’t the only Democrat and Republican who agree that the threat from Jihadist terrorism is worse today than it was years ago—and that the threat is actually getting worse.

On Sunday, The Washington Times reported that members from both sides of the aisle are skeptical of the Obama administration’s portrayal of President Obama as a great “terrorist fighter.”

Some members of Congress are resentful of the administration promoting what they see as a “false narrative” of Obama as the hero that killed Osama Bin Laden, while Al Qaeda grows and spreads. Other members of Congress are concerned that Al Qaeda and other Jihadist terror groups are active in more safe havens today than ever before with more Jihadi warriors fighting in more places than ever before.

Given that Al Qaeda was able to launch the September 11th, 2001, terrorist attacks from a single safe haven in Afghanistan, the proliferation of Jihadist terrorism in more places than ever is rightly seen as a threat to US national security.

For instance, Rep. Michael T. McCaul of Texas, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, told CNN on Sunday that Al Qaeda and Jihadist ideology was “spreading like a spider web, like a wildfire through Northern Africa and the Middle East.” He also reported that the threat to America has become greater in recent years, despite assurances from President Obama, particularly during politically-tainted presidential campaign speeches.

We cannot emphasize enough how dangerous it is for the President of the United States to be spreading a false narrative about the status of our enemies in the war on terrorism.

First, by claiming repeatedly that Al Qaeda is “on the path to defeat” and “on the run,” when the available evidence suggests that Al Qaeda is growing stronger, Obama is encouraging Americans to let down their guard. Not just ordinary American citizens, but our first responders as well. Leadership is more important to a war effort than any other form of endeavor and our nation’s leaders’ words matter.

We aren’t talking about a few isolated incidents of exaggerations or misstatements either. As CNSNews reported in November of 2012, just two months after the terrorist attack in Bengahzi, Libya, which resulted in the deaths of 4 Americans, Obama was almost constantly stating that Al Qaeda was being “decimated”.

This brings us to the second negative impact of the Obama administration’s false narrative. By repeatedly claiming that Al Qaeda is defeated, the president is almost daring the Jihadists to prove him wrong. Early on in Operation Iraqi Freedom, President Bush was criticized for uttering the words “bring it on,” when asked about the Jihadist insurgents in Iraq. But that quip was nothing compared to Obama’s repeated claims that Al Qaeda is through. It has rightly been compared to “spiking the football,” and is no doubt viewed as a taunt by Al Qaeda.

By saying that Al Qaeda is on the path to defeat when they are clearly growing stronger in more safe havens than ever before, Obama is waving a red cape in front of a bull. It might be okay if Al Qaeda was in fact close to defeat, but taunting a strong Al Qaeda could result in Americans paying the ultimate price for Obama’s boasts.

At ACT! For America, our role as the largest, fastest growing grassroots national security organization is to ensure that our leaders act and speak responsibly and that our fellow citizens are educated about the threats that America faces. All of us need to make certain that our elected officials know that we will not tolerate cavalier, irresponsible rhetoric when it comes to the war effort. We must thank our fighting men and women for the victories that they fight for, but we must never let down our guard for the sake of political expediency.

Several dozen suspected terrorist bombmakers, including some believed to have targeted American troops, may have mistakenly been allowed to move to the United States as war refugees, according to FBI agents investigating the remnants of roadside bombs recovered from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The discovery in 2009 of two al Qaeda-Iraq terrorists living as refugees in Bowling Green, Kentucky — who later admitted in court that they’d attacked U.S. soldiers in Iraq — prompted the bureau to assign hundreds of specialists to an around-the-clock effort aimed at checking its archive of 100,000 improvised explosive devices collected in the war zones, known as IEDs, for other suspected terrorists’ fingerprints.

“We are currently supporting dozens of current counter-terrorism investigations like that,” FBI Agent Gregory Carl, director of the Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center (TEDAC), said in an ABC News interview to be broadcast tonight on ABC News’ “World News with Diane Sawyer” and “Nightline”.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if there were many more than that,” said House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul. “And these are trained terrorists in the art of bombmaking that are inside the United States; and quite frankly, from a homeland security perspective, that really concerns me.”

As a result of the Kentucky case, the State Department stopped processing Iraq refugees for six months in 2011, federal officials told ABC News – even for many who had heroically helped U.S. forces as interpreters and intelligence assets. One Iraqi who had aided American troops was assassinated before his refugee application could be processed, because of the immigration delays, two U.S. officials said. In 2011, fewer than 10,000 Iraqis were resettled as refugees in the U.S., half the number from the year before, State Department statistics show.

Suspect in Kentucky Discovered to Have Insurgent Past

An intelligence tip initially led the FBI to Waad Ramadan Alwan, 32, in 2009. The Iraqi had claimed to be a refugee who faced persecution back home — a story that shattered when the FBI found his fingerprints on a cordless phone base that U.S. soldiers dug up in a gravel pile south of Bayji, Iraq on Sept. 1, 2005. The phone base had been wired to unexploded bombs buried in a nearby road.

An ABC News investigation of the flawed U.S. refugee screening system, which was overhauled two years ago, showed that Alwan was mistakenly allowed into the U.S. and resettled in the leafy southern town of Bowling Green, Kentucky, a city of 60,000 which is home to Western Kentucky University and near the Army’s Fort Knox and Fort Campbell. Alwan and another Iraqi refugee, Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, 26, were resettled in Bowling Green even though both had been detained during the war by Iraqi authorities, according to federal prosecutors.

Most of the more than 70,000 Iraqi war refugees in the U.S. are law-abiding immigrants eager to start a new life in America, state and federal officials say.

But the FBI discovered that Alwan had been arrested in Kirkuk, Iraq, in 2006 and confessed on video made of his interrogation then that he was an insurgent, according to the U.S. military and FBI, which obtained the tape a year into their Kentucky probe. In 2007, Alwan went through a border crossing to Syria and his fingerprints were entered into a biometric database maintained by U.S. military intelligence in Iraq, a Directorate of National Intelligence official said. Another U.S. official insisted that fingerprints of Iraqis were routinely collected and that Alwan’s fingerprint file was not associated with the insurgency.

Syria’s al Qaeda-linked rebels are gaining strength and garnering support from more secular opposition forces, a former deputy CIA director said.

Michael Morell, who recently retired from the No. 2 position at CIA, also warned in an interview set for broadcast Sunday that a U.S. military strike on Syria is likely to trigger cyber terror attacks.

On Syria’s al Qaeda rebels, Morell identified two main groups: the Al Nusrah Front and Ahrar al-Sham as “the two most effective organizations on the battlefield.”

“They have a disproportionate influence on the battlefield to their size,” Morell said in an interview with “60 Minutes” on CBS.

“And because they’re so good at fighting the Syrians some of the moderate members of the opposition joined forces with them to fight the Syrians,” he said.

Morell warned that Syria’s civil war, which so far has claimed 100,000 lives, will produce one of two bad outcomes. Either “a strong, more brutal [Bashar al] Assad regime, or a rebel government influenced by al Qaeda.”

“I’m concerned because where we’re headed right now is toward, I fear, the breakup of the state of Syria,” Morell said. “Collapse of the central government sectarian warfare, opportunity for al Qaeda to have a safe haven in Syria that is not dissimilar to the safe haven that it once enjoyed in Afghanistan.”

Disclosure of the growing threat of al Qaeda-linked rebels in Syria comes as the Obama administration is moving ahead with plans to provide covert military assistance to Syrian rebels it regards as “moderate.”

Secretary of State John Kerry told Congress recently that most of the estimated 90,000 opposition forces are “moderate.”

That view was challenged by Rep. Michael McCaul (R., Texas), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, who said he was informed by intelligence officials that 50 percent of the rebels are Islamists and that the number is growing.

House Homeland Security Committee Chair Michael McCaul (R., Texas) offered a searing indictment of the Obama administration’s “wait and see diplomacy” during a wide ranging foreign policy speech Wednesday that focused on what he dubbed the president’s failure to lead.

Obama’s indecision and failure to take a stand in Syria, Egypt, and elsewhere in the world have emboldened America’s enemies and allowed extremists to galvanize greater support, McCaul said in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

“That lack of clarity isn’t just confusing, it’s dangerous,” McCaul said. “One cannot lead if they refuse to accept reality.”

Obama is misleading the American public about the threats posed to America by radical extremists, he added.

“The battlefield is now everywhere,” McCaul said. “The president likes to deliver speeches. What he may not realize is his words have a practical application.”

Radicals across the world were listening when Obama declared earlier this year that the war on terrorism is coming to an end, McCaul said.

“Publicly downgrading a real threat which is growing only emboldens our enemies and sends a signal we lack resolve,” McCaul said.

Such declarations also degrade the morale of America’s fighting forces, he said.

“Rhetoric has a ripple effect,” McCaul warned. “I believe the president should be more careful.”

Broad statements about ending the global war on terror “do not constitute a counterterrorism policy,” McCaul added. “Words cannot simply wish it away.”

While “declaring the war over is a popular thing to do politically … misleading the American people with a false narrative does them a great disservice,” McCaul said. “The reality is the threats we faced on Sept. 10, [2001], exist today.”

The Obama administration has systematically ignored and downplayed the threat that Muslim extremists pose to America, McCaul said.

From the Fort Hood shooting to the Benghazi, Libya, attacks, as well as the Boston Marathon bombing, team Obama has avoided using terms such as “radical Islam,” McCaul said.

“The administration may think by taking the war on terror and radical Islam out of the conversation it will help end the conflict. But in reality you cannot defeat an enemy you are unwilling to define,” McCaul said.

Several members of Congress joined representatives of the special forces military veterans and grassroots organizations on Tuesday to launch an effort to force the House to have a thorough, public investigation into the terrorist attack at Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012.

Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) has introduced legislation to create a special select committee to investigate both the terrorist attack and subsequent actions by President Barack Obama’s administration and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s State Department. Wolf’s bill has 161 co-sponsors. House GOP Leadership has not scheduled a vote on the bill.

Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) plans to harness the support for Wolf’s bill into a “discharge petition” that would force a floor vote on the bill. The petition would need to be signed by 218 members of the House.

“I’m going to describe what a discharge petition is because a lot of people have asked me questions exactly what it is,” Stockman said at the Tuesday press conference outside the U.S. Capitol building. “It’s to ask our leadership or actually demand from our leadership that we have a vote on Frank Wolf’s bill. [Wolf is] a congressman from Virginia who has a long history of being here and is articulate in demanding that we have an independent investigation.”

Stockman added, while gesturing to blown up photographs behind him of the four Americans murdered in Benghazi, “if Congress is silenced,” then “the blood of these folks behind us is on our hands.”

“We can’t be silent any more,” he said. “It’s been a year going by that we haven’t had justice. These folks demand justice. They cry out for justice. Silence is not an option any more. We’re going to challenge them. We’re going to have a discharge petition. I encourage you to contact your congressman to sign the discharge petition.”

Stockman expects most or all of the 161 members on Wolf’s bill to support the discharge petition, and at the press conference specifically said House Homeland Security Committee chairman Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) is supportive of circumventing House Leadership via the discharge petition.

Retired U.S. Air Force Col. Dick Brauer, the founder of Special Operations Speaks, said the combination of Wolf’s bill and Stockman’s discharge petition “would be done to fully investigate, something that has not been done to date, the national tragedy in Benghazi, where we lost four great citizens in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012.”

“You will hear this from me and others today but we need your help and your friends’ help and everybody else’s to make this happen because it’s our one chance to do something before the anniversary of that tragedy which will occur about seven weeks from now,” Brauer said.

At the press conference, Brauer’s group unrolled an enormous scroll of a petition that includes the signatures of about a thousand special forces veterans joining the call for this investigation. “What you see on my left is a one of a kind. I don’t think it’s ever been done before: a four-foot-by-sixty-foot copy of the Special Operations Speaks petition that we sent to the House of Representatives on the Eighth of April asking for this select committee with subpoena power,” Brauer said. “The scroll is signed by nearly 1,000 special operations veterans, from the rank of Lieutenant General Three Stars down to every other rank you can imagine, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, all of them passionate about what we’re trying to do.”

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), a congressman who supports the discharge petition, said at the press conference that he was asked by a reporter recently about Benghazi: “Gee, that was so long ago. Do we really want to pursue this now?”

“I told the reporter that when I was a judge handling felony cases, I had defendants ask me that question – ‘that was so long ago, do we really need to get into all this now?’ I can tell you when the blood of American patriots cries out, when the blood of individuals who were sent there into harm’s way, knowing how dangerous it was in Benghazi, and especially two former SEALs who were even told to ‘Stand Down’ but they wouldn’t have it,” Gohmert said. “They went to save lives and that’s exactly what they did. They even recruited another State Department man, a former army ranger, to go up there on the rooftop with them. What they knew from the first moment mortars were fired was that this was an organized, well-prepared attack on our people. We need to get to the bottom of it. Their blood cries out for that.”

Former Florida Republican Rep. Allen West concurred with the others there, adding: “If it’s more important to some people in Washington, D.C., to protect President Obama and to protect former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, I say shame on you. Every single member of the United States House of Representatives should have their name on this discharge petition. If their name is not on that discharge petition, you are complicit in this cover-up of what happened.”

Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy said that if the truth is not uncovered in Benghazi, a terrorist attack like it is likely to happen again. “I believe that this is not likely to be an isolated incident,” Gaffney said at the press conference “If we don’t learn the lessons of what happened in Benghazi, how we got to there, what we did on the occasion and what has happened in the aftermath, you can be sure there will be other Americans who end with the same fate.”

Sheikh Abdullah Bin Bayyah posted this photo of his June 13 White House meeting.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism has uncovered evidence that radical Muslim cleric Sheik Abdullah Bin Bayyah, who met with top White House officials last month, personally urged Muslim nations to aid the Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza militarily.

“Muslim rulers are required to rescue their fellow Muslims in many ways, through financial, military and diplomatic support. Everything should be done to stop this terrible, ongoing massacre in Gaza,” Bin Bayyah wrote in April. The posting was removed following the release of IPT’s June 26 report about Bin Bayyah’s White House visit. “I also call upon our Palestinian brothers to unite all resistance movements in the same name and under the same banner. And it is the duty of all Arabs to help them in the name of Islam, logic, pan-Arabism and humanity.”

The comment lines up with the position of the International Union for Muslim Scholars(IUMS), headed by Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi. Bin Bayyah has been its vice president for 9 years. The group notably issued a December 2012 communiqué praising Hamas’s “strategic victory … in the dignified Gaza” and calling for Israel’s destruction.

Bin Bayyah notably declared that Palestinian terrorists have the right to all “kinds of resistance, including the use of weapons.”

“He … avoids any specifics at all, giving the reader the room to use his opinion to finance causes like Hamas, Hizballah, or other radical Islamists,” Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, said.

Islamic charities such as the Holy Land Foundation and others have notably been convicted of laundering zakat donations to fund Hamas or other terror groups.

While the lawsuit over the sale of Al Gore’s Current TV to Al Jazeera is making headlines, a close reading of the legal complaint provides additional evidence that a congressional investigation into the curious transaction is urgently needed and necessary.

The media executive who claims to have arranged the sale says the idea was to make the Terror TV channel “palatable to U.S. lawmakers,” a formulation that suggests foreign lobbying on Capitol Hill in order to protect the $500 million payoff to Gore and other owners and investors in Current TV.

The suit says that media executive John Terenzio also proposed smoothing things over with “pro-Israel factions, cable operators and, most importantly, the American public.”

The other controversial aspect of the deal, as noted by Fox News contributor Lisa Daftari, is that “Al Jazeera America” has announced plans for bureaus in eight cities, including Detroit, Michigan, and that “Detroit, Michigan is a large ex-pat community of Muslim-Americans where [Jihadist] sleeper cells have been detected.”

Because of the danger of inciting Arabs and Muslims into anti-American violence, Accuracy in Media has called on the House Homeland Security Committee, under the chairmanship of Texas Republican Michael McCaul, to investigate the sale and look at the evidence that the channel is a foreign terrorist entity that can be outlawed on U.S. soil. He has refused to do so.

The Al Gore lawsuit constitutes another reason why Congress has to investigate. If Al Gore had paid Terenzio for his services, as the suit alleges, it is likely that the nature of the deal and the private discussions that went into it would never have been made public. Now, however, all of this is on the public record and more damaging details, if Gore doesn’t settle the lawsuit, will almost certainly come out.

The revelations demonstrate how sensitive the deal was in the first place. Terenzio says one of his objectives was to develop “strategies to overcome Al Jazeera’s negative image and make Al Jazeera acceptable to American viewers.” Many members of the public associate Al Jazeera with the videos of Osama bin Laden, the architect of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America. Al Jazeera aired those videos, as well as interviews with bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders, and is today still regarded as the voice of the pro-terrorist Muslim Brotherhood.

In short, the plan was for a massive propaganda campaign to play down the channel’s ties to al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, and its financing by the pro-Jihadist Arab government of Qatar.
Read more: Family Security Matters